


endless days

by pyrrhlc



Series: melichrous [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Epilogue, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, post-melichrous, uhhh just some feelings really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 04:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17276933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhlc/pseuds/pyrrhlc
Summary: Enjolras tries talking to Éponine.





	endless days

**Author's Note:**

> Been thinking about this conversation for a while. Set about a month after the end of Melichrous.

“Éponine? Can I talk to you?”

The last of their friends are already filing out of the meeting room; Éponine, as she is warrant to do, is perfectly within her rights to ignore him – but she doesn’t. Perhaps his face is more telling than it isn’t. She drops her hand from Cosette’s and unlinks her other arm from Marius’, walking over to him with an expression that is far too guarded and far too cautious and far too like a woman going to war. Enjolras forgets how frightened he is by Éponine sometimes. He can spin a pretty yarn when he wants to, but Éponine? Éponine is a hurricane. Enjolras isn’t quite sure what he used to do at meetings before Éponine came along to argue with him. Nobody else, he thinks, would ever rail against him like she does. Except…

Éponine stops in front of him, waving a hand in his face. “Enjolras? What is it?”

He will not give that thought precedence here. It’s been months. Enjolras can’t think about Grantaire now – except perhaps in this sole capacity. He looks over Éponine’s shoulder uncertainly at her two companions; Combeferre and Courfeyrac, too, hover in the doorway. Combeferre’s face is underscored with worry; Enjolras looks away from him. He tilts his gaze away from Éponine and says in a low voice, “I need – to talk to you. Alone.”

Éponine’s face changes quickly at that, a little like a weathervane. She’s a thunderstorm; she conducts lightning. She knows. Enjolras watches as she turns and waves at her two partners, anxiety building up like a crescendo in his chest. He can’t help it. He’s so quiet now, but then he doesn’t really know what it is to be himself anymore. He needs to have this conversation before it can kill him.

Combeferre is still trying to catch his eye; Enjolras lets him. He doesn’t have to speak to make his meaning clear: _Are you all right?_ Enjolras nods at him in a way that he hopes can be interpreted without Combeferre coming any closer. His friend is one that could believe in anything, but Enjolras doesn’t want him to believe in this. He would rather forget any of it ever happened.

 _If anyone can understand_ , he thinks—and then abandons the thought as Éponine grabs hold of the sleeve of his jacket, pushing him down into a nearby chair with more force that is perhaps necessary. Enjolras doesn’t critique her. He can’t, not after the bombshell he’s about to drop on her. She falls into the other seat with the casual grace of one well-practised at pretending not to be graceful, fixing him with an eye that does not waver. Enjolras wishes he could be like her sometimes. It’s hard to imagine anything rocking Éponine out of her orbit – except, perhaps, for this. Enjolras bites down on his bottom lip.

“What is it, Enjolras? I’m fucking dying for a cigarette here.”

“I—” He swallows the sentence in his head and starts again, unprepared. Éponine looks very intimidating today. She looks very intimidating every day. “I wanted to talk to you about—about Manchester. When you lived there as a student.” He watches her as he speaks without quite looking at her. Éponine is suddenly very still. “About why—why you came home.”

“I came home because it wasn’t for me. Because I could barely afford that kind of shit anyway.”

Enjolras hates himself for this, but he shakes his head. “No,” he says quietly, watching Éponine’s chipped black nails tap impatiently against the table. “You came home because you lost a friend.”

Éponine sits back in her chair and looks at him, raising herself up to her full height. The bangles on her arms jangle as she crosses them in front of her chest, defensive, always, of what might come next. “What I did or didn’t do in England is no concern of yours, Enjolras. I don’t care what kind of story you think you’ve dug up—”

“Grantaire told me,” he says, voice barely above a whisper now. Éponine’s eyes grow ever sharper.

“What did you just say?”

“I didn’t know. I ended up renting your old apartment. He was still there.”

Éponine stands up abruptly from the table, shoving back her chair. “Don’t bullshit me,” she says, her shoulders shaking. Enjolras doesn’t get up. “I will hit you so hard you won’t even be able to breathe—”

“I just want to talk to someone who knew him. Who would understand.”

Éponine’s shoulders slacken by the slightest degree. She sighs.

“You are so full of shit,” she mutters. Then: “Get up. I need a cigarette.”

*

The back of the Musain is a place Enjolras rarely goes—except perhaps on one or two occasions that he won’t talk about even to himself. Shots and a healthy dose of Bahorel had been involved. He’s never felt the urge to repeat the incident. But Éponine smokes. She offers him a cigarette as soon as they step outside.

“If anyone needs one, it’s you,” she mutters, after he declines. It’s an early January evening and already the darkness is gathering; Enjolras can feel it pressing in on him. He shrugs it from his shoulders as best he can and sits down beside Éponine on the cold concrete steps. There are worse places to confess your deepest secrets, he thinks.

Éponine breathes a long tendril of grey smoke into the dusk. “Grantaire has been dead for almost two years now.”

“I know. He was hit by a car, and you found him.”

Éponine squeezes her eyes shut for a moment before taking another long drag of her cigarette. She shakes her head at Enjolras as if she’s pitying him, and Enjolras finds he doesn’t really mind if she is. “Who told you that?”

“He did. Eventually.” He sighs as Éponine puts her head in her hands. “Éponine, please—”

“You understand what you’re saying, don’t you? You realise I hardly fucking know you?”

Enjolras looks away at that. The  aristocratic edge of old seems to blend into his words without him noticing. “You always contribute to our discussions. I thought we got along well.”

“I argue with everything you say!”

“You—” Enjolras’ mouth moves wordlessly for a moment. “That’s not true,” he finally gets out.

“Yes, it is! Dammit, and now you’re expecting me to believe my best friend came back as a _ghost_?”

Now, Enjolras finds it is his turn to put his head in his hands. “This was a bad idea,” he mutters. Éponine throws her cigarette onto the ground and stamps it flat with her foot. She immediately draws out another from the packet.

“Those are bad for you,” Enjolras says automatically, then winces as she swivels. Éponine’s two black eyebrows are perfectly sharp. He ducks his gaze.

“I don’t understand,” she says softly, and Enjolras blinks as he realises that the Éponine in front of him is the one beneath all the other Éponines she’s been hiding under. The one who paints her nails black and then immediately bites them down to the core. “You are a stupid, ridiculous man, but—”

“But?”

“You,” Éponine says slowly, “are so sad. How can you be so sad about someone you never met? It doesn’t make sense.”

“He went out to get milk,” Enjolras finds himself saying in reply. Éponine’s mask of indifference slips just a little further. “He went out to get milk, and it was running down the street—”

Éponine leaves the cigarette dangling in her mouth as she leans back to press her head against the cool metal of the rear door. Her eyes dart sideways to look at him.

“You’re not lying.”

“No.”

“Good God.” The lighter clicks; Éponine inhales. “You prick. Is this why you came back?”

“He left.”

Enjolras is certain not to let his voice betray him in this moment, but Éponine seems to hear it anyway; that faint wobble of uncertainty, like a sharp intake of breath drawn just too late. Enjolras feels it in his chest, but he doesn’t voice it. The darkness does not need a mouthpiece. Éponine’s cigarette drops with a muted splash into a puddle near her feet.

“Fine then,” she says, answering so much more than Enjolras’ words, than this scrambled attempt at communicating what has been. It feels like a change in the tide. “It can be our secret.”


End file.
